Is a short story a book--and would you read Moby Dick on a cell phone?
Ebooks, Etext and PoD

Beginning with this issue, Cites & Insights uses Adobe Acrobat 7 to support text-to-speech and bookmarks. You'll need at least Acrobat Reader 5, and 6 or 7 for the accessibility and organization bookmarks (7 is faster than 6).

This issue also has a few more test HTML files--the selective form
that may or may not continue. These particular files should be stable
indefinitely. Go to the home page to check them out.

And now that it's clear that I really, truly suck at creating
tabloid-style headlines, don't expect to see them again.

Let's see if the tabloid-style headlines increase the download stats :-).
Too bad there was no use of the word 'RSS' in the tabloid headlines. These
days, RSS controversy is like the old publishing joke about how one
should write a book about "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog", a surefire hit.

The underlying serious point, though, is that there's thousands of words that
people don't get an indication to read. A few gems:

(One weblogger commenting on the 6,000-word WIKIPEDIA AND WORTH
[REVISITED] perspective managed to boil it down to "we should all just
get a grip." Now that's concise writing. I'm jealous.)

And:

You've guessed by now that I regard slashdot with a mixture of horror
and fascination: If that's a community conversation, call me a hermit.

More relevantly:

But there's more--although it's all variations on the rest of this
essay: Every weblog gives a considerably larger voice to the owner(s)
of the weblog than to anyone else wishing to "join in the
conversation." It's not a conversation. It's a statement that may be
followed by responses (and responses to those responses), but one
person (or a small group) always gets to make the initial
statement--and usually the final one as well.

"It's not a conversation. It's a statement that may be followed by responses (and responses to those responses), but one person (or a small group) always gets to make the initial statement--and usually the final one as well."

I think that increases the quality of the discussion, actually. When people are forced to go write a post on their own blog if they have a lot to say, rather than the Usenettish ankle-biting line-by-line sniping.

It's the difference between writing an article and trying to explain your point of view to a bunch of friends on a pavment corner. Sure, the latter's a conversation, but it's unlikely to get anywhere.

Firas: I don't use Usenet; I will say that the best lists I'm involved with mostly provide something like real conversation. You may be right that, to some extent, the article-and-response style can increase the quality of the discussion (although the real world suggests it can do the opposite as well)--but it's still not really a conversation. It's something else; "dangling conversation" may be as good a name as any. Not bad, just different.